Social determinants of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children

Abstract

Sugar-sweetened beverages such as non-diet soft drinks, cordial and sports drinks are prime examples of discretionary foods National Health and Medical Research Council [NHMRC] 2013). They are high in sugar, devoid of nutrients, and provide limited satiety (Malik, Schulze, & Hu, 2006). The average serving of sugar-sweetened beverage contains around ten teaspoons of sugar; this exceeds the new World Health Organization (WHO; 2014) recommended daily limit of sugar for an adult, let alone a child. Sugar-sweetened beverages have been demonstrated to have detrimental impacts on health at the individual and population level: among other impacts, they are associated with dental caries (decay) and erosion (Hector, Rangan, Gill, Louie, & Flood, 2009; Jamieson, Roberts-Thomson, & Sayers, 2010), and growing consumption of these beverages is linked to increasing obesity globally (Basu, McKee, Galea, & Stuckler, 2013). These conditions contribute significantly to healthcare costs in Australia (Hector et al. 2009), as well as to health inequity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians (Christian & Blinkhorn, 2012; Vartanian, Schwartz, & Brownell, 2007; Zhao, Wright, Begg, & Guthridge, 2013).